In the process of shipping an item from one location to another, a protective packaging material is typically placed in the shipping container to fill any voids and/or to cushion the item during the shipping process. Some commonly used protective packaging materials are plastic foam peanuts and plastic bubble pack. While these conventional plastic materials seem to perform adequately as cushioning products, they are not without disadvantages. Perhaps the most serious drawback of plastic bubble wrap and/or plastic foam peanuts is their effect on our environment. Quite simply, these plastic packaging materials are not biodegradable and thus they cannot avoid further multiplying our planet's already critical waste disposal problems. The non-biodegradability of these packaging materials has become increasingly important in light of many industries adopting more progressive policies in terms of environmental responsibility.
These and other disadvantages of conventional plastic packaging materials have made paper protective packaging material a very popular alternative. One machine which converts paper into a packaging material includes a stock supply assembly, a forming assembly, a gear assembly, and a cutting assembly, all of which are mounted on the machine's frame. During operation of such a cushion producing machine, the stock supply assembly supplies the stock material to the forming assembly. The forming assembly causes the lateral edges of the sheet-like stock material to roll inwardly to form a continuous strip having lateral pillow-like portions and a thin central band. The gear assembly pulls the stock material through the machine and also coins the central band of the continuous strip to form a coined strip. The coined strip travels downstream to the cutting assembly which cuts the coined strip into pads of a desired length.
Various attempts have been made to inhibit access to the cutting assembly of a cushioning conversion machine. For example, a cushioning conversion machine has been provided with a solid cover which remained in a closed condition unless physically pushed upon by a dunnage strip travelling through the exit opening. A modified version of this solid cover was a "curtain cover" formed from a plurality of fingers that were hinged to the machine in such a manner that they could be pushed outward by the approaching dunnage strip, but could not be pushed inward. However, either cover could be easily pulled open from the outside of the machine. Moreover, operation of the cutting assembly was completely independent from the condition of the cover, whereby the cutting assembly would continue to operate even when the cover was pulled open.
Another attempt made to inhibit access to the cutting assembly involved providing a cushioning conversion machine with a significantly long output chute that, by virtue of its length, would inhibit access to the cutting assembly. However, such an output chute added to the overall length of the machine, a disadvantage in the many packaging sites with limited space options. Also, such a long output chute complicated the discharge of shorter pads (i.e., pads shorter than the length of the chute). Moreover, operation of the cutting assembly was completely independent of the output chute whereby the cutting assembly would continue to operate even if a length foreign object was inserted into the output chute.